Hurricane Helene and Messages via Satellite
Hurricane Helene has caused massive damage and taken over 100 lives across several US states. Many thousands of people are without power and/or cell service. But in the wake of the storm, reports have surfaced about a key iOS 18 feature that has been a lifeline for survivors: Messages via satellite.
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To learn more about Messages via satellite, Apple has a support document available here.
Satellite messaging was added in iOS 16 (for iPhone 14 and newer) but only supported contacting emergency services. With iOS 18, you can also contact family and friends when there’s no Wi-Fi or cellular coverage.
Unfortunately, the National Climatic Data Center is based in Asheville, North Carolina. As I write this, the center’s website remains offline. That’s because Asheville, a city in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, is the epicenter of catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Helene that has played out over the last week. The climate data facility is inoperable because water and electricity services in the region have entirely broken down due to flooding.
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So how does a region nearly 500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico become devastated by flooding from a hurricane that originated there?
The answer is that Helene’s rapid movement inland—it was one of the fastest-moving storms at landfall in the Gulf of Mexico in recent history—created a massive river of atmospheric moisture and funneled it into parts of North Carolina, northern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee.
The White House said on Monday dozens of Starlink satellite systems that provide high-speed internet access were in use in North Carolina, with over 100 more in transit to areas devastated by Hurricane Helene.
Spruce Pine sits about an hour northeast of Asheville, Mitchell County, and is home to the world’s biggest known source of ultra-pure quartz—often referred to as “high-purity quartz,” or HPQ. This material is used for manufacturing crucibles, on which global semiconductor production relies, as well as to make components within semiconductors themselves.
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Spruce Pine supplies around 70 percent of the naturally occurring HPQ that is needed for computing devices and products. The site’s market position and significance were underlined in 2019 when a manager for Quartz Corp, one of the two main mining companies that works the deposit, told the BBC: “Inside nearly every cell phone and computer chip you’ll find quartz from Spruce Pine.”
Previously:
- iOS 18
- Emergency SOS via Satellite Pricing
- iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus
- iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus
Update (2024-10-07): Joe Rosensteel (Mastodon):
He tried force-quitting Messages, and restarting his iPhone, and reseting his network settings, but no matter what he did, my iPhone insisted Ry was only reachable via satellite. So then I restarted my iPhone, and I tried turning off and on all the various connection methods at my disposal.
That’s when I found out that everyone else having a one-on-one conversation with Ry from an iOS 18 device was also experiencing what I was experiencing.
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If I had to guess (and it’s probably better if I don’t) it seems like Ry’s phone pushed some status to Apple’s iMessage servers which was pushed to our iOS 18 devices… and stuck. I can’t think of another reason why the satellite messaging state was preserved until we each toggled off iMessage support on our individual devices. There’s no toggle to disable sending and receiving satellite messages in Settings. In fact, if you search Settings for “satellite” it doesn’t return any results at all.
Update (2024-10-10): Adam Engst:
The bottom two screenshots in the collection above show conversations that refused to allow satellite communications. The first is straightforward—group chats aren’t available via satellite, even if everyone is on iMessage. I get that—even if there isn’t a technical limitation, Apple presumably doesn’t want people overloading the system with chatty conversations.
The second is more obscure. Apple warns in its notes that iMessage won’t work for someone “if you haven’t sent them an iMessage recently,” but SMS should. That message appears in a conversation that hasn’t seen any traffic for six months. We should have been given the option to use SMS.
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This off topic update from a mountainbiker gives a good first person view of the disaster https://youtu.be/31IGdeIY3PQ?si=bRsHY2SfoOT5-DRz
It's difficult to fathom how Apple could completely remove some (perhaps restricted in ways) free tier for satellite messaging, given its lifesaving nature in various situations.
Aside, YouTube ran — no joke — almost 20 minutes of ads before I could get to the 3:15 mark in that insightful video. I wonder how many people won't continue to watch or donate to recovery efforts because they've never heard of Chuck Norris and don't care about his $49.95 health supplement deal.
